“We stood long watching our departing foe, and then three very sobered men dropped down silently and quickly that afternoon upon Susa, thinking of what might have been our fate.”
CHAPTER XVII
LANDSLIPS IN THE MOUNTAINS
“SIR W. MARTIN CONWAY has been good enough to allow me to extract from The Alps from End to End the following account of the destruction of Elm. Mountain falls have a special interest for all who travel in Switzerland, where the remains of so many are visible.
“The Himalayas are, from a geological point of view, a young set of mountain ranges; they still tumble about on an embarrassingly large scale. The fall, which recently made such a stir, began on 6th September 1893. That day the Maithana Hill (11,000 feet), a spur of a large mountain mass, pitched bodily rather than slid, into the valley.
“‘Little could be seen of the terrible occurrence, for clouds of dust instantly arose, which darkened the neighbourhood and fell for miles around, whitening the ground and the trees until all seemed to be snow covered. The foot of the hill had been undermined by springs until there was no longer an adequate base, and in the twinkling of an eye a large part of the mountain slid down, pushed forward, and shot across the valley, presenting to the little river a lofty and impervious wall, against which its waters afterwards gathered. Masses of rocks were hurled a mile away, and knocked down trees on the slopes across the valley. Many blocks of dolomitic limestone, weighing from 30 to 50 tons, were sent like cannon-shots through the air. The noise was terrific, and the frightened natives heard the din repeated at intervals for several days, for the first catastrophe was succeeded by a number of smaller slides. Even five months after the mountain gave way, every rainy day was succeeded by falls of rocks. A careful computation gives the weight of the enormous pile of rubbish at 800,000,000 tons.’
“The Himalayas are indeed passing through their dramatic geological period, when they give rise to such landslips as this at relatively frequent intervals. Plenty of landslips quite as big have been recorded in the last half-century, and, amongst the remote and uninhabited regions of the great ranges, numbers more of which no record is made constantly happen. The catastrophic period has ended for the Alps. Landslips on a great scale seldom occur there now; when they do occur, the cause of them is oftener the activity of man than of natural forces. But of a great landslip in the Alps details are sure to be observed, and we are enabled to form a picture of the occurrence. When the Alps tremble the nations quake; the Himalayas may shudder in their solitudes, but the busy occidental world pays scant attention, unless gathering waters threaten to spread ruin afar. Of the Gohna Lake we have been told much, but little of the fall that caused it. Eye-witnesses appear not to have been articulate. We can, however, form some idea of what it was like from the minute and accurate account we possess of a great and famous Alpine landslip. I refer to that which buried part of the village of Elm, in Canton Glarus, on 11th September 1881.[13]
“Elm is the highest village in the Sernf Valley. Its position is fixed by the proximity of a meadow-flat of considerable extent. Above this three minor valleys radiate, two of which are separated from one another by a mountain mass, whose last buttress was the Plattenbergkopf, a hill with a precipitous side and a flat and wooded summit, which used to face the traveller coming up the main valley. It was this hill that fell.
“The cause of the fall was simple, and reflects little credit on Swiss communal government. About half-way up the hill there dips into it a bed of fine slate, excellent for school-slates. In the year 1868 concessions were given by the commune for working this slate for ten years without any stipulation as to the method to be employed. Immense masses of the rock were removed. A hole was made 180 mètres wide, and no supports were left for the roof. It was pushed into the mountain to a depth of 65 mètres! In 1878, when the concessions lapsed, the commune, by a small majority, decided to work the quarry itself. Every burgher considered that he had a right to work in the quarry when the weather was unsuitable for farm labour. The place was therefore overcrowded on wet days, and burdened with unskilful hands. The quarry, of course, did not pay, and became a charge on the rates, but between eighty and one hundred men drew wages from it intermittently.
“The roof by degrees became visibly rotten. Lumps of rock used to fall from it, and many fatal accidents occurred. The mass of the mountain above the quarry showed a tendency to grow unstable, yet blasting went forward merrily, and no precautions were taken. Cracks opened overhead in all directions; water and earth used to ooze down through them. Fifteen hundred feet higher up, above the top of the Plattenbergkopf, the ground began to be rifted. In 1876 a large crack split the rock across above the quarry roof, and four years later the mass thus outlined fell away. In 1879 serious signs were detected of coming ruin on a large scale. A great crack split the mountain across behind the top of the hill. The existence of this crack was well known to the villagers, who had a special name for it. It steadily lengthened and widened. By August 1881 it was over four mètres wide, and swallowed up all the surface drainage. Every one seems then to have agreed that the mountain would ultimately fall, but no one was anxious. The last part of August and the first days of September were very wet. On 7th September masses of rock began to fall from the hill; more fell on the 8th, and strange sounds were heard in the body of the rock; work was at last suspended in the quarry. On the 10th a commission of incompetent people investigated the hill, and pronounced that there was no immediate danger. They, however, ordered that work should cease in the quarry till the following spring, whereat the workmen murmured. All through the 10th and the morning of the 11th falls of rock occurred every quarter of an hour or so. Some were large. They kept coming from new places. The mountain groaned and rumbled incessantly, and there was no longer any doubt that it was rotten through and through.
“The 11th of September was a wet Sunday. Rocks and rock-masses kept falling from the Plattenberg. The boys of the village were all agog with excitement, and could hardly be prevented by their parents from going too near the hill. In the afternoon a number of men gathered at an inn in the upper village, just at the foot of the labouring rocks, to watch the falls. They called to Meinrad Rhyner, as he passed, carrying a cheese from an alp, to join them, but he refused, ‘not fearing for himself, but for the cheese.’ Another group of persons assembled in a relative’s house to celebrate a christening. A few houses immediately below the quarry were emptied, but the people from them did not move far. At four o’clock Schoolmaster Wyss was standing at his window, watch in hand, registering the falls and the time of their occurrence. Huntsman Elmer was on his doorstep looking at the quarry through a telescope. Every one was more or less on the qui vive, but none foresaw danger to himself.